


taking care

by mxmyth



Series: Eternal Winter Campaign [6]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Disordered Eating, Eternal Winter campaign, F/F, Food Issues, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxmyth/pseuds/mxmyth
Summary: Silver knew what it was like to be truly, gnaw-on-bones hungry.
Relationships: Stormfey - Relationship, Zada/Silver
Series: Eternal Winter Campaign [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636795
Kudos: 4





	taking care

Silver knew what it was like to be truly, gnaw-on-bones hungry. There were the days of her early childhood, when one evening she would be presented at catered dinner parties so that the guests could marvel over her half-human features and her precocity, and the next she would be locked in her room and forgotten. She would never be able to forget those long days and longer nights, when she collected rainwater from her small window and counted the hunger pangs, hoping desperately that she would be remembered soon.

Later, when she was still in the proving part of her training, she was handed a bow and a quiver of arrows and told that she would only eat what she could hunt. How she had cried over her first kill, a little grey rabbit with a patch of white on its chest. Her hands were shaky from lack of food so her aim was off, and she couldn’t bring herself to end it any faster so it had suffered cruelly. In that way she learned well the cost of softness, and the sacrifice of prey so that the hunter may live. 

When she first found herself on the Material Plane, newly exiled and hollow with grief, she hardly ate anything. What was the point? She watched her slenderness turn to thinness, felt her ribs protrude and the ridge of her spine press into her leather armour, and wished for it to end faster. She didn’t want to live, but as with the rabbit she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was only stumbling upon a bandit attack in progress and jumping in to defend a young family that made her realize how very weak she had become and snapped her out of it. If she wanted to be of use to anyone or anything she needed to be stronger. She sharpened her scimitar and began to eat again.

So if Zada, Deria, and Cinder gave her strange looks for hunting as they travelled across Cantus’ snowy landscape, even though Zada could magic up food to keep them alive, it didn’t bother her. Zada’s created food was enough to sustain them but they needed to be strong, and Silver wouldn’t have been able to sleep well if she didn’t hunt for her party. The strange little ice crabs were plentiful and almost too easy to catch, and sometimes she got a rabbit, and with these she supplemented their bland diet. 

She was particularly concerned for Zada and Deria. They were both warriors, muscled and larger than she, which meant they needed meat to keep healthy. And then there was her love for Zada, which manifested as a constant drive to take care and to see her provided for. Whenever they came across food in abandoned houses—pickled vegetables, sweets in wax paper, slightly stale crackers, a jar of amber honey—she made sure that Zada ate of it, subtly pressing second helpings on the cleric and acting as if she couldn’t finish her own serving so that Zada would finish it for her.

And this was enough to soothe her worry, to make her feel that she was taking care of her adventuring companions and looking out for the one she loved. She would have liked to have seen Zada with more weight on her, a happy margin against the harsh hunger that Silver had known and hated, but she was strong and healthy as she was. Silver would do her best to ensure that Zada stayed that way, and it would be enough. As long as she had a say, no one that she loved would be truly hungry.

**Author's Note:**

> Just Silver is mine, Zada is Goldie's, Deria is Maeve's, and Cinder is Leanne's. The world they adventure in is mastered by the lovely and merciful Potato.


End file.
